There can be few examples of intensive fashioning and self-fashioning by a Renaissance figure more remarkable than Prince Henry (1594-1612). Two decades after the appearance of Roy Strong's revelatory Henry Prince of Wales and England's Lost Renaissance this collection of essays re-examines the extraordinary artistic and cultural response to Prince Henry and presents many new findings in the context of recent scholarship.

In the present age, in which anti-heroes are preferred to heroes exemplifying virtue and honour, and in which 'idols' are raised in the expectation that they will sooner or later fall, the investment of great hopes in Prince Henry, and the extreme importance attached to the creation of a fitting image for him, extending even to its posthumous development, indicate that early modern society regarded its leaders very differently from our own.

The Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia (1566–1633), the eldest daughter of Philip of Spain, was one of the most significant female political players of the seventeenth century. Isabel, however should not be seen as political figure alone but also as a woman, embedded in the material culture of her times in manifold roles and through varied practices. More